She was waiting for him in the library with an expression both eager and worried. She crossed the room to meet him, but paused half-way as though really fearful of some change. But she saw only the same kind, tense face, looking perhaps a bit heavy from weariness, the same dark eyes with their strange fires, the same slight droop of the shoulders. There was certainly nothing to fear in him as he stood before her with a tender, quizzical smile about his large mouth. He looked to her now more like a big boy than the cold, stern man she had half expected. "Are you afraid?" he asked. "No, not standing here where I can see you. But over the telephone with your strange voice and your half meanings--what _did_ you mean?" "Nothing you need worry about." She became suddenly serious. "I want to tell you now that there is no need of your trying to hide anything at all from me about Ben." "I am hiding nothing. But," he asked with quick intuition, "are _you_?" She hesitated, met his eyes, and dropped her voice. "I can tell you nothing--not even you--unless you have learned it." "I, in my turn, don't know what you mean," he answered. "I have learned nothing new about him. And it is too fair a morning," he concluded abruptly, "to bother over puzzles. Things have happened so rapidly that we are probably both muddled, and if we could spend the time in explanations we should doubtless find that neither of us means anything." She was clearly relieved, but it raised a new question in Donaldson's mind. Of course she understood nothing of what had taken place last night unless by mental telepathy. But in these days of psychic revelations a man could n't feel secure even in his thoughts. There was apparently some inner secret--she had touched upon it before--relating to the Arsdale curse. Doubtless if one pried carefully enough many another skeleton could be found in the closets of the house of this family half-poisoned now through three generations. It was early and it suddenly occurred to her that he had probably not yet breakfasted. She struggled a moment with a conflicting sense of hospitality and propriety, but finally said resolutely, "I should be glad if you would breakfast with me. You ought to try your new cook." The picture he had of her sitting opposite him at the coffee brought the warm blood to his cheeks. "I--why--" "Will you have your chop well done?" she broke in, without giving him time to frame an excuse. "Yes," he answered. She left him.